A four-year post-weight loss study by the NIH shows that motivated people *do* keep weight off. I weigh 50 [...]]]> If you read Tara Parker Pope’s article The Fat Trap, you might be led to believe that weight loss is difficult and maintaining a weight loss is a herculean feat. This is just not true.

A four-year post-weight loss study by the NIH shows that motivated people *do* keep weight off. I weigh 50 pounds less than I did in 2000. I lost that weight in two big pieces, one in 2000 and one over the end of 2009 into 2010. Don’t let her defeatism convince you to not bother.

People who maintain a weight loss do pay attention to what they eat. I do not weigh and measure everything, and I do drink alcohol and eat sweets or chips sometimes. The key is to eat the most nutritious diet that you can, using fruits, vegetables and healthy protein sources to crowd out foods that don’t contribute much to your nutrition bottom line.

A few points:

• If you go back to what got you fat, you will gain back the weight. You need to find a weight-loss formula that is really a lifestyle change.
• Eating like “everyone else” isn’t what you think. If you mean the “everyone else” that’s overweight or obese, that’s an obvious problem. If you mean someone who is active all day and you aren’t or someone who is still growing, that’s another problem right there.
• People who are naturally thin don’t eat the way you imagine. The two very thin people I know DO eat a lot less than I do on average. One of them fasts and binges, which is actually a formula for weight loss if done correctly.
• You must eat high-quality food while dieting and afterwards. Yes, you can eat a bit more afterwards, but the basic composition of your diet needs to be the most nutritious food you can get.

I think the next big thing in dieting will be micronutrient sufficiency. I’m see it becoming a popular topic on blogs and podcasts. Here are three references to it from the last week:

Paul Jaminet’s The Perfect Health Diet
Free The Animal’s post on Malnutrition and Obesity
Jimmy Moore’s Podcast with the authors of Naked Calories.

It’s a little short on potassium and calcium, but those could be brought up with the “clear broth” suggested if it were made with bones. Potassium can be supplemented with NoSalt.

Here’s the food list. Pretty standard diet material.

I’d lose [...]]]> I entered the suggested “safety and comfort” reducing diet for my ideal weight into Fitday.

It’s a little short on potassium and calcium, but those could be brought up with the “clear broth” suggested if it were made with bones. Potassium can be supplemented with NoSalt.

Here’s the food list. Pretty standard diet material.

I’d lose weight on this, I’m sure, but note that this diet is chock full of protein and would likely be pretty satisfying. It’s moderate carb and low-ish fat.

I’ve had this sitting around for a while, and I didn’t read it [...]]]> This is a review of Lyle McDonald’s The Ketogenic Diet: A complete guide for the Dieter and Practitioner. I’ve also recently read a couple of his other books, but after thinking about it a while, I learned the most from this one.

I’ve had this sitting around for a while, and I didn’t read it because I figured that 1) I wasn’t interested in a ketogenic diet at the moment and 2) I know what a ketogenic diet is already. The thing is that the book is chock full of biochemistry that I didn’t know and that was very enlightening.

Because of all the information it contains on everything related to metabolism, I’d recommend it for any non-scientist with a stubborn weight problem or really, any weight problem at all. No matter what kind of weight-loss diet you want to do, the processes detailed and explained in this book are really important to understand.

I also have a keen interest in his book The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook, but I’m not going to talk about that until Dr. Mike’s Thin So Fast shows up. It’s my understanding that it’s also a Protein Sparing Modified Fast, which is what the McDonald’s RFL Diet actually is. Anyway, moving on.

In case you don’t know what a ketogenic diet is, here’s a definition:

In the most general terms, a ketogenic diet is any diet that causes ketone bodies to be produced by the liver, shifting the body’s metabolism away from glucose and towards fat utilization. More specifically, a ketogenic diet is one that restricts carbohydrates below a certain level (generally 100 grams per day), inducing a series of adaptations to take place. Protein and fat intake are variable, depending on the goal of the dieter. However, the ultimate determinant of whether a diet is ketogenic or not is the presence (or absence) of carbohydrates.

Atkins is a ketogenic diet, as are most low-carb plans. There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what ketosis is, and instead of defending it, I’m just going to say that it IS NOT KETOACIDOSIS. This is well covered by McDonald – most people cannot provoke ketoacidosis since people without diabetes that are not alcoholics have feedback loops that prevent it ever happening. If you could cause this to happen just by not eating carbohydrates, how on earth would our human ancestors have made it through the ice age? Answer: they wouldn’t. Your system will deal, so don’t worry about it.

I now understand exactly how the brain starts using ketones for fuel, why it causes fatty tissue breakdown, and how much is too much protein on a low-carb diet. More importantly, I also understand how dietary fat works, and I see why I didn’t lose weight by shifting to a high-fat, low-carb diet. I’d get into ketosis, but it was mostly from dietary fat, so it never really touched my own stores. You can still eat fat and get your body to break down it’s own fat, but not too much.

Another really important thing: I understand why stalls happen on low-carb diets. The same hormones that caused your weight to drop are only made even MORE fat sparing by cutting carbs more – the usual solution. There are a lot of questions from people on the internet wondering how on earth they could be eating 20 carbs a day and not losing weight. The answer? They need to do a re-feed because their system has freaked out and lowered their metabolism by using hormones that are not insulin. It’s much easier for women to provoke this condition with a long-term very low-carb diet, but it can happen to men too. It’s more complex than this, but I’m not going to quote a whole chapter here.

One of things about protein that I learned that’s easy to explain is that it’s about 58% non-ketogenic. Let’s say I’m eating 125g of protein and 75g of net carbohydrate (we can ignore fiber here). This means that I will have 147g of glucose available for my body as fuel. This will definitely not be ketogenic. If I keep protein the same and lower net carbs to 50g, I should get into ketosis. The other factor is fat: about 10% of fat grams are made available as glucose in your bloodstream. Fat is *not quite* too cheap to meter, and eating more fat will actually lower utilization from your fat stores. If you’re trying to lose fat, that’s not something you want to do.

One of the other stumbling blocks for low-carb eaters is this one:

Individuals who have been on a low-carbohydrate diet (of any type) will show a rapid increase in bodyweight when carbohydrates are added to the diet (2,3). This weight gain…can be anywhere from 5 to 11 pounds (2,3).

For dieters who focus only on the scale, this rapid weight gain can be disheartening, pushing them straight back into a low-carbohydrate eating style. The inability to differentiate between weight gain and fat gain tends to promote the belief in dieters that excess carbohydrates (rather than excess calories) are the cause of their problems. This may make it difficult for these individuals to ever wean themselves away from the ketogenic diet.

For people who read AND FOLLOW the official Atkins Diet, they know to re-introduce carbs slowly. Most people just stop cold and add carbs back, gaining weight and then saying the diet failed them. In reality, they didn’t follow the diet.

The vital bit that McDonald suggests is this one: “for every 2 grams of carbohydrate which are added to the diet, 1 gram of fat must be removed.” This is because calories DO matter. How much you use and how much you waste has to do with your metabolism, but eating too many calories is going to cause you to gain weight over time. When you first stop dieting, your metabolism is often quite keen to put that fat right back on, so maintenance shouldn’t be ignored. McDonald recommends around a 65% fat diet, so it shouldn’t be too painful to remove some of that to add back carbs.

I don’t agree with everything last he says, but the science is understandable and well-referenced.

This book is very much worth reading, especially for Paleo/Primal types that are looking to lose (more) weight or lean out. I’m very well read in terms of diet books of the Paleo and low-carb stripe, and I learned a ton from this book. Yes, it’s expensive, so I’ll leave it to you if it’s worth it, but if you’re really stuck, it’s probably worth the $50.

Once you’ve gone low-carb for a long time, whether you’re paleo or not, it’s hard to go back without gaining weight. Many people who’ve been on a low-carb diet for a long time claim that they gain from consuming [...]]]> This time, I’m launching right in so I don’t get distracted. Part one is here.

Once you’ve gone low-carb for a long time, whether you’re paleo or not, it’s hard to go back without gaining weight. Many people who’ve been on a low-carb diet for a long time claim that they gain from consuming any carbs, and quickly. Many people that do any kind of a long-term diet gain the weight back, but they don’t seem as surprised by this as low-carbers or paleo/primals that gain or stall out. Many of the LC and Paleo/Primal crowd are very strong-willed people who’ve been doing something difficult with a major part of their life for months, and they feel like they know what they are doing by now (damn it!), so how could this awesome way of eating betray them?

My first post has a pretty high-profile low-carber talking about her issues, and Richard Nikoley’s “Paleo Diet Problems” includes a concise list, just thrown out there. The comments go on for a very long time, and are damned interesting.

I can concur that low-carb just stopped working for me at some point. I was told that I must be doing it wrong, but no matter where I took my macronutrients or diet composition generally, it didn’t really make any noticeable difference. Now that I’ve gotten the weight off through brute force, I’m determined not to gain it back, but it is definitely not easy. I think there are two main reasons that the stalls or gains occur.

First, you may have eaten a food that you have an allergy or sensitivity to, one you had restricted on your Paleo or low-carb diet. Often, this food is in a cheat/reward meal at a restaurant with *other* foods you haven’t eaten for a while, so it’s hard to figure out which one is the troublemaker. If you gain several pounds overnight, you’re inflamed, and it’s probably an immune issue, unless you did something ridiculously strenuous or actually injured yourself. If you way-overdo working out, throw your back out or get in an accident, your muscles can retain a lot of water. Food allergies can be very hard to suss out, especially for women since they have a lot of up and down just from female hormone cycles.

Second, you may have down-regulated your metabolism. If this is the case, you’ll gradually put on weight eating more calories or high carbohydrate foods, and you won’t lose from buckling down on your current program.

So, let’s imagine that you are an actual hunter/gatherer living in the wild. You aren’t going to go on a diet. You don’t care if you have a spare tire. You aren’t likely to exclude entire groups of food because you think they are unhealthy. Except for meat, your foods are available seasonally, and since it’s now winter, the vast majority of your calories are from meat. In order for you to survive and procreate, your body makes the glucose it needs from said meat. You aren’t hungry, and you’re still alive. Eventually, your metabolism needs less food to keep you alive. This is a *brilliant* evolutionary strategy. Lowering your body temperature and pulse doesn’t do you any serious harm because your food supply, though it may be available is not endless, so why run pointless cycles to create waste heat? After all, you might need that fat later.

When other foods (fruit, tubers) become available, you will certainly eat them, and you will either use the energy for tasks or your will pack on some fat. But now you need less food, and if you can get by like this it’s an evolutionary win. And the appetite suppression? If you’re not hungry, you can just sit on your butt instead of hunting so you don’t need more food. Another win for survival!

The first time you get keto-adapted, the strategy works well and you lose quite a bit of fat because your body has it to spare and that’s why it packed it on. Once your body is on to you (detecting that it’s winter and your food it’s not getting any carby foods), it’s going to quit wasting fat on unnecessary heat.

If you are a female H/G, maybe you’ll get pregnant. Either you’ll be growing a new human outside you or nursing one for at least three years, through all the seasons and possibly some food shortages. Now it’s really a win to lower your metabolism. I think this is why more women have subclinical hypothyroid issues after being keto-adapted for a while. Eventually, you might not be fertile at all because your hormones think the environment will not provide and that you don’t have enough fat to get by. This happens more than I ever thought it did. I always pictured this happening to extreme athletes like ballerinas, gymnasts and runners. I would *not* have guessed it happened to women that don’t look in any way extreme…but read the comments on that thread at Free The Animal or listen to some of Robb Wolf’s podcasts.

Your hormones are planning for the future, and you just can’t trick your body forever. If you insist on sticking to your plan, you might lower your calories more or add a bunch of strenuous exercise. This will mess up your adrenals. You might buckle down harder and burn out your adrenals. While you’re provoking your body to use adrenaline, you feel good, so you don’t detect a problem with the exercise. If you want to learn more about Cortisol, Adrenaline and bio-chemicals and how use use them up and really screw yourself up, read Dr. Diana Schwarzbein’s The Schwarzbein Principle II, The Transition. I always thought “adrenal fatigue” was like the new yuppie flu. I don’t think that any more – I fully accept that it’s a real thing.

You could, of course, have developed a thyroid problem. Many people report that it’s hard to get taken seriously by mainstream medicine unless you hit the markers on a blood test. Even if you do, it’s hard to get your medication where you need it to be. None of this means you *don’t* have a thyroid problem caused by chronic dieting. Now, I’m not a doctor, and I’m not giving medical advice, but this article at Ray Peat’s site was a real eye opener. But wait! There’s more. If you’re a woman, do not pass up his articles on progesterone and estrogen. They are worth a lot more than you’ll pay for them (hint: they are free). There’s a lot there, and it’s well documented and annotated.

All these hormones have to perform a delicate dance for you to feel good and look good. It’s worth reading up on them if you’re stuck or stalled or feeling crappy, especially if you’re already sure that you’ve got all your food sensitivities mapped out.

One blog that covers subclinical hypothyroid quite often is 180 Degree Health. I don’t agree at all with Matt Stone’s “High Everything Diet” (google it, I’m too annoyed with him over the Jimmy Moore thing to drive traffic to his site) that includes lots of potatoes and rice. He’s talking about 400g of carbohydrate a day which you might note compares quite well to the Standard American Diet. He strongly discourages gluten grains and Omega-6 fats, but people do report gaining up to 20lbs. (I saw this in a comment on his blog) by taking his advice on how to “heal their metabolism.”

I think he’s taken a lot of solid ideas from Ray Peat, Dr. Diana Schwarzbein’s The Schwarzbein Principle II and possibly Lita Lee and come up with something quite different than what they recommend. He promotes a lot of ideas from Dr. Broda Barnes that have been damned useful to me, but I combined that information with Peat, Schwarzbein and Lee and wound up somewhere quite different from the “High Everything Diet.”

Broda Barnes recommended the following for weight loss:

It’s pretty moderate, unlike Matt’s diet, and it includes fruit, something the low-carb paleo crowd criticize quite often because of the dreaded fructose.

Schwarzbein recommends balanced meals of real foods that include 20-30g of carbohydrate, as much green veg as you like and sufficient protein. This comes out to more like 100g of carbohydrate a day, not 400g. Lita Lee’s recommendations are almost entirely the same as Ray Peat’s: avoid all unsaturated liquid oils except extra virgin olive oil, all soy products, herbal estrogens and estrogen stimulators, all RAW cruciferous vegetables and do eat adequate protein (she and Peat recommend a lot of full-fat dairy as a protein source), whole sea salt, complex carbohydrates (fresh orange juice and raw carrots are mentioned by Peat often) and coconut oil. How you get stuffing your face with carbs out of that, I don’t know.

There are some interesting bloggie bits at Diet-Fucked too. Most of the entries are distillations of ideas from people I’ve already mentioned, but the anecdotes and other pointers in the comments were great for me.

I want to return for just a moment to Richard Nikoley’s blog post. I had some of the same issues he complained about, and since I had cut a lot of salt out of my diet and switched my salt intake to sea salt, I thought it was possible that I could be deficient in iodine. I tried that for a while, and found out that this is true, at least for me:

“In my quick research on the issue, I note a number of sources that indicate iodine is a U-shaped curve, i.e., too little or too much can cause hypothyroid conditions.”

A little helped, more helped more…and then it got worse. I saw something on, I think, Ray Peat’s site that said “beware of the iodine guzzling cults”, and thought about the fact that I’d heard that before…and cut way down. Now I take some, but not too much.

For more about hypothyroid and graphic body temperatures, check out Dr. Bruce Rind’s site. Diana Hsieh tracked her body temps for a while, and has her information on the web, if you’d like to see some real data.

I don’t have this all figured out by any means, but what I’ve learned from all these sources is really helping. Maybe it can help you too.

Within what I can only describe a mean-spirited and pointlessly rude blog post from Matt Stone, there’s one interesting nugget of possible truth:

“…remember that prolonged dieting (this one, [...]]]> I’ve been seeing reasoned debate about the effect of long-term low-carb diets for a while now, but this last week, things kind of exploded into a yelling fest.

Within what I can only describe a mean-spirited and pointlessly rude blog post from Matt Stone, there’s one interesting nugget of possible truth:

“…remember that prolonged dieting (this one, low-fat, low-calorie, or a combination) tends to shut down thyroid function. This is usually not a problem with the thyroid gland (therefore blood tests are likely to be normal) but with the liver, which fails to convert T4 into the more active thyroid principle, T3. The diagnosis is made on clinical ground with the presence of fatigue, sluggishness, dry skin, coarse or falling hair, an elevation in cholesterol, or a low body temperature. I ask my patients to take four temperature readings daily before the three meals and near bedtime. If the average of all these temperatures, taken for at least three days, is below 97.8 degrees F (36.5 C), that is usually low enough to point to this form of thyroid problem; lower readings than that are even more convincing. It may be appropriate for those of you who fit these criteria to be prescribed thyroid by your doctor, and if so, a natural form of the hormone, which contains T3, is far superior to the most popular form of prescription thyroid, synthetic T4.”

-Robert C. Atkins

Google books says it comes from The Complete Dr. Atkins. Since I don’t own that, and I’ve never read it, that would explain why I’ve never seen this quote.

Jimmy Moore responded in the comment section of Matt’s site as well as on one of his blogs. Richard Nikoley of Free The Animal leapt to Jimmy’s defense. Matt has also previously said disparaging things about Richard.

My concern about all of this is that vital information might be missed. A lot of former low carbers or current paleo dieters *do* seem to have thyroid or metabolic issues of some kind.

Jenny, who runs diabetes update, talked about why low-carb stopped working for her. The whole piece is worth reading, but here’s the introduction:

The enthusiasm for the low carb diet as a weight loss diet arises in the first few weeks and months when most people experience dramatic weight loss.

What rarely gets mentioned–especially in the miracle weight loss books–is that very few low carb dieters ever get to their weight loss goal, especially those who start out with a lot of weight to lose.

I am enthusiastic about the power of carb restriction to lower blood sugar to normal or near normal levels. I am not as enthusiastic about low carbohydrate dieting as the solution to tough weight loss problems.

Because even the online low carb community tends to believe that people who stall out are “not doing the diet right” and respond to stall posts with that assumption, most people who do stall out long term leave the discussion boards, leaving only those who have succeeded to greet the newbies.

I’d like to point out that “not doing it right” is *exactly* what the purveyors of conventional wisdom spew at fat people trying to lose weight. If eating less and exercise is not working, then clearly, you aren’t doing it right. Or you’re lying about what you’re eating and your workout schedule. I think these amount to the same thing, but “you aren’t doing it right” is a lot nicer than “you’re a liar”.

I’ve seen many of the same complaints on BBSes like Low Carb Friends and Active Low-Carbers and even on Atkins Diet Bulletin Board. People will complain (almost exclusively women, though this may be a function of the boards themselves rather than an indication that all the people having the problem are women) that they can’t lose weight unless they cut calories to 1,400 or even lower, and generally, they do this by eating very low carb because they aren’t (as) hungry that way. This does not seem to get them anywhere either, and most low carb books I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot of them) indicate that counting calories is a bad idea. While they admit that it’s possible to eat too much, they recommend you don’t count calories, but because almost everyone tracks their carbs in something like Fitday, they always know what the calorie count is.

Atkins says that if you have a lot of weight to lose, it’s OK to stay on induction a long time. So, people stay on induction a long time because, in their minds, they have a lot of weight to lose. At some point, their weight loss becomes negligible. They either add a lot of cardio at this point, or get very strict about what they are eating. The Atkins book says that after induction, you should be adding carbs back at the rate of 5g per week until you don’t lose weight any more, then back off a little. There’s a “carb ladder” that indicates the order. The ADBB folks who have made goal by following the instructions in the book always push for this, but I think it scares people to think they will stop losing weight, gain weight or even go on a carb binge, so they don’t do it.

In Lyle McDonald’s The Ketogenic Diet he has a section on hypothyroid and euthyroid stress syndrome that contains this sentence: “The decrease in T3 due to hypothyroidism must be contrasted to the decrease seen during dieting or carbohydrate restriction.” Basically, that the decrease in T3 is a known issue with ketogenic diets (Atkins is a ketogenic diet).

Any diet of sufficient length and restriction will slow the metabolism. It seems to take longer on a low-carb diet than a straight-up low-calorie diet, and it’s possible that alternate day diets or calorie cycling might be an even better option, but I think what a lot of low-carbers (Atkins and lwo-carb Paleo Dieters alike) are experiencing is an evolutionary adaptation that makes complete sense once you see it from the right angle. I think that it handily explains the idea of the Atkins “One Golden Shot”.

In my next blog post, I’ll try to give the right angle.

There’s useful information within, and there are a few recipes I’ll try.1 I could, in fact, do his Phase 1 diet with little difficulty. Beyond that? It’s not something I’m going to do, and where it winds [...]]]> I was interested in reading this particular book after seeing it mentioned in several of my usual nutrition haunts.

There’s useful information within, and there are a few recipes I’ll try.¹ I could, in fact, do his Phase 1 diet with little difficulty. Beyond that? It’s not something I’m going to do, and where it winds up at Phase 3 (ie, the rest of your life) is simply not somewhere I want to go.

His “Phase 1″ diet involves eating protein portions the size of your palm and as much greens and other low-carb vegetables as you like. Pumpkin is limited to 1 cup per day, beets and carrots are allowed raw only. His vegetable list is about what you see on any low-carb diet. What really got me interested is that he’s claiming we are in a summer mode, and we should tell our genes that Winter is Now in order to let go of fat. There’s a lot about that in Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival, a book I really liked and found fascinating.

A deviation from most low-carb plans is that the dairy allowed in the form of fresh cheeses like ricotta, mozzarella and yogurt (1/2 cup to 1 cup) and only a maximum of 1 ounce of aged cheese is permitted. Eggs are in the dairy section and are permitted.

Virtually any soy substitute is permitted for meat or dairy, which I find kind of baffling in a book that complains quite a lot about how lousy the modern diet is. He even lists seitan as OK, which surprised me.

Also included are a two snacks each to consist of 1/4 cup unsalted, raw nuts (except peanuts – they should be roasted). He recommends eight to ten glasses of water daily, as most diets do. Men may have two glasses of red wine a day, and women may have one. After the first two weeks, you can add back up to two servings of a list of fruits, though he says they will slow weight loss. Avocado and tomato are on the fruit list (they *are* fruits, after all), so you can’t have them the first couple of weeks. The fruits are all the lower sugar ones you’d find on lower carb diets.

That all sounds pretty do-able to me. This is where it gets a bit sideways:

As you continue in Phase 1, slowly cut back on the size of your protein portions and simultaneously upsize your portions of “Friendly Vegetables,” especially leafy greens. In doing so, you’ll decrease the amount of calorie-dense but micronutrient-sparse food and increase the amount of those denser in micronutrients but lower in calories. For example, if you’re already eating 2 cups of salad or cooked vegetables a day, up it to 3 cups. If you’re already at 3 cups, take it to 4 or 5 cups. If you have always been a big veggie fan, you can eat even more. By the end of your sixth week in Phase 1, your protein servings should be roughly half the size of your palm.

His goal is to get you to a mostly raw vegan diet. He uses meat and sometimes cheese as a seasoning in the Phase 3 meal plans. He’s very big on tofu shirataki noodles, in particular, but soy is all over the place. I guarantee our ancestors, primates or humanoid, were NOT eating soy.

Over the past twelve or more weeks, you’ve transitioned from Phase 1 of Diet Evolution, which emulates the diet people ate roughly a century ago, to Phase 2, based on the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our earlier ancestors. As a result, you’ve normalized your weight—or are on a steady course to do so—enhanced your health, and are well on the way to making permanent changes in your lifestyle.

Uh, apparently, he’s never looked at a cookbook from a century ago. I have, and l can say that people were afraid of raw vegetables. They cooked everything, and certainly, they ate plenty of bread and cooked root veggies.

As far as hunter-gatherers, there seems to be some romanticism that they were out gathering plants all day. This is simply not possible for half the year in a lot of places that humans *did* live before agriculture. They were killing animals, especially in the fall when the animals were fattest, and when they needed that fat themselves to make it through the winter. Furthermore, have you ever eaten wild fruit? We’ve subdued fruits so that they produce small seeds and lots of sugar because we’re smart, have thumbs and love sugar. Wild fruit is very seedy and has it’s own future as it’s primary concern, not ours. Never mind the fact that plants were only available seasonally and for relatively short periods for each. We can have damn near anything we want, any time. Do you really think a hunter-gatherer would have killed a fowl and then only eaten the white meat without the skin? If you believe that one, I have a bridge to sell you, as the kids used to say.

Phase 3 reaches back even earlier for inspiration. I regard the Longevity phase as the natural culmination of my program. But I am well aware that it is not for everyone. Up to now, you have been eating both cooked and raw foods, the latter primarily in the form of salads. In Phase 3, you eat primarily raw food, as our earliest ancestors did. For them, the opportunity to consume meat and other animal sources of protein was not a daily event; they relied instead on plant protein, consuming most of it raw.

So, in other words, our primate ancestors because the first humans ate mostly meat. I’m not really sure what he thinks plants were like before we started mucking around with them and growing them ourselves, but our guts simply cannot get enough nutrition out of what was available then.

In particular, people like to point out that gorillas are big and strong, a close relative of humans and eat mostly plants (they also eat insects). What goes *in* to a gorilla is low in fat. They get protein from plants, but they eat an enormous quantity of them. Dr. Gundry specifically says you should get your protein by eating lots of vegetables. He also says you should cut your nut portion to 1/8 of a cup for each of two snacks, so less protein there. I can’t find the quote right now, but he eats an entire bag of pre-cut and washed romaine per day in addition to lots of other vegetables.

Anyway, we aren’t gorillas. Our small intestine does 50% of our nutrient extraction and our colon does 20% (estimates, obviously). A gorilla (and other large plant-eating primates) are set up opposite this. They extract most of their nutrients in their large intestine and cecum.

This difference is highly significant. In a herbivore such as the gorilla, the caecum and colon harbour huge colonies of bacteria which ferment carbohydrates, particularly fibre, and use it to produce short chain fatty acids (SCFA) — principally acetic, proprionic and butyric acids. These are then absorbed into the body to be used as a source of energy.

So, the gorilla’s diet looks like it’s mostly carbs, but the gorilla gets something quite different out of it. It eats foods containing 5.9% fat, 37.1% carbohydrate and 57% protein. After it’s bacteria do their job, it’s estimated they wind up getting more like 24.3% protein, 15.8% carbs and 59.8% fat. Our systems just can’t do that.

Based on what I see in his Phase 3 meal plans, it looks like he’s suggesting around 800 calories a day. Throughout the book he stresses not counting calories or weighing foods. Now there’s nothing wrong with that. Both of those things are a pain in the ass, but the critic in me says that it’s so he can take your calories waaaaay down without you knowing. By the time you figure that out, you’re already doing it!

I find it really hard to believe I wouldn’t be hungry on that little protein, never mind the calories. Every time I’ve tried to reduce protein, I get hungry and can’t control my appetite. The only time I’ve gotten away with that, I was taking HCG! Getting a lot of protein from soy is no solution either. When I tried that, I got to my fattest *ever*, and it completely fucked up my hormones.

All that aside though, the dirty little secret of every diet is that you can’t ever really go off of it. If you go back to what you were eating before, you gain the weight back and then some. Watch this space for more about that.

¹The Seed-Sar Salad recipe is fantastic. I don’t see it attributed at this link, but the text is identical to that in the book. I used half walnuts and half sunflower seeds because I didn’t have pumpkin seeds, but wow, was it tasty.